Rock-a-bye Baby

At my friend Kim’s suggestion, we started William on a bedtime routine. This was around the time Baby started enjoying his bath time, and we used his nightly bath as the jumping-off point for the routine. I thought it would be too early to introduce nightly rituals to establish a routine, and he wouldn’t catch on and submit to the schedule, but Kim was right…never doubt a mother of two! The ideal schedule starts around eight. I feed William, and then we play. He gets fussy at 8:45ish, but we forge ahead with the playing and hold him off until from his bath until 9. We take William the Fussy upstairs, and he calms a little when we turn on the bathroom lights, and he completely stops crying when the bathwater starts flowing. Magic. We play and wash him for about thirty minutes, dry him off (and blow-dry his hiney if needed), and head to our room to read. The Very Hungry Caterpillar is the only book we’ve tried with him, and it seems to be the perfect length. Some nights I can get all the way through it, and some nights he fusses at page two, so we skip to the last page with the butterfly. Once he has enough of story time, I swaddle him, feed him, and walk him to sleep. He likes to be walked around our room and have his butt thumped. Once he loses his grip on the pacifier, into the bassinet and SLEEP! Thanks, Kim for the suggestion to start this early – it has drastically reduced the nighttime battle with Baby Will, and last night marked his third night of a stretch of SEVEN HOURS OF SLEEP WITHOUT WAKING UP!!